The Tampa Bay Buccaneers activated defensive lineman Adam Gotsis and offensive lineman Michael Jordan from the practice squad on Saturday, making both players eligible to play in Sunday's 2024 season opener against the Atlanta Falcons.
The NFL introduced the practice squad elevation option in 2020, allowing teams to activate up to two practice squad players for each game. By utilizing both options in Week One, the Buccaneers have increased their game day roster to 55 players for their Week One matchup with the Falcons. They will be able to keep 48 of those player active for the game, naming seven inactives prior to kickoff.
Each player on the practice squad can be elevated up to three times during the regular season and an unlimited amount of times in the postseason. After the game, elevated players automatically revert to the practice squad without having to pass through waivers.
The Bucs' Week One elevations allow them to address two spots on the depth chart at which they were running a little lighter than usual. The team kept just five defensive linemen past the roster cutdown to 53 players and had starting nose tackle Vita Vea miss all but one practice this week due to a foot ailment. Vea is officially listed as questionable for Sunday's game. The Buccaneers also kept just eight offensive linemen on the active roster and one of those, Tristan Wirfs, has already been ruled out for the opener due to a knee injury. Teams can only keep 48 players active for a game if eight of them are offensive linemen; otherwise, the limit is 47. Therefore, teams almost always go into a game with eight healthy offensive linemen.
The practice squad elevation option was introduced as part of the new collective bargaining agreement in 2020. The new rule was something of a compromise, as it did not expand the active rosters beyond 53 players but did give teams a few more options on game days. In this case, the Bucs needed it to stay fully staffed in the trenches.